The present invention relates to telecommunications in general, and, more particularly, to a technique for notifying a person who is engaged in a telephone call with a second person that a third person is calling him or her.
A popular feature of modem telecommunications systems is xe2x80x9ccall waiting.xe2x80x9d Without call waiting, a person who was engaged in a telephone call with a second person did not know when a third person was calling him or her. In contrast, with call waiting, a person who is engaged in a telephone call does, in fact, know when a third party is calling.
In accordance with a typical call waiting system, the telecommunications system notifies the first person that a third person is calling by injecting a series of beeps into his or her ear. This is accomplished by generating and injecting the beeps into the audio channel from the second person. Upon hearing the beeps, the first person can either ignore the incoming call or can put the current call on hold and switch to the incoming call.
Although call waiting is popular and convenient, the method of notification is disadvantageous in that it often drowns out the voice of the second person. This is intrusive and disruptive and somewhat eliminates the overall advantage of call waiting in the first place.
Therefore, the need exists for a less intrusive and disruptive technique for notifying a person who is engaged in a telephone call with a second person that a third person is calling him or her.
The present invention provides a technique for notifying a person who is engaged in a telephone call with a second person that a third person is calling him or her without some of the costs and disadvantages for doing so in the prior art. In particular, the illustrative embodiments notify the person of the arrival of a message (e.g., a telephone call, a fax, an e-mail, etc.) not with a series of beeps but with a voicexe2x80x94synthetically generated or pre-recordedxe2x80x94that has at least one different psychoacoustic characteristic than the voice of the second person. By using a notification that is psychoacoustically different than the voice of the second person, the illustrative embodiments facilitate the ability of the first person to simultaneously perceive and understand the notification and the voice of the second person.
For the purposes of this specification, a xe2x80x9cpsychoacousticxe2x80x9d characteristic of a voice is defined as a quality of a voice that facilitates the ability of a listener to perceive and understand one voice at the same time as another. A psychoacoustic characteristic of a voice is not, therefore, necessarily the same as a voiceprint characteristic, which seeks to identify a voice or to distinguish one voice from another. Rather, a psychoacoustic characteristic of a voice is a quality of a voice that affects the perception of that voice. Example psychoacoustic characteristics of a voice include, but are not limited to, the gender of the speaker""s voice (i.e., male or female), the natural language of the speaker""s voice (e.g., English, Spanish, French, etc.), the smoothness of the speaker""s voice (e.g., silky or raspy, etc.), the frequency range of the speaker""s voice (e.g., soprano, alto, contralto, tenor, baritone, bass, etc.), hurried versus relaxed, pleasant vs. dissonant, agitated versus, calm, etc. For example, if the second person""s voice sounds xe2x80x9cmalexe2x80x9d (i.e., has the psychoacoustic characteristic of xe2x80x9cmalenessxe2x80x9d), then a notification that sounds xe2x80x9cfemalexe2x80x9d (i.e., has the psychoacoustic characteristic of xe2x80x9cfemalenessxe2x80x9d) will be less disruptive to a listener than a notification than sounds xe2x80x9cmale.xe2x80x9d
The illustrative embodiments of the present invention comprise: a receiver for receiving an incoming message for a first person, wherein the incoming message arrives while the first person is engaged in a telephone call with a second person; and a processor for estimating a first psychoacoustic characteristic of the second person""s voice and for notifying the first person to the arrival of the incoming message with a voice that is different in the first psychoacoustic characteristic than the second person""s voice.